The subject matter disclosed herein relates to rotary-winged aircraft. More specifically, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to actuation of control surfaces of rotary-winged aircraft rotor blades.
Manufacturing and assembly tolerances of rotors for, for example, rotary-winged aircraft such as helicopters, are often such that the resulting rotor is not balanced either in terms of weight, or lift produced by the rotor blades. The imbalance manifests itself in undesirable vibration and/or noise under certain flight conditions. Such issues also occur in other rotor applications, such as those for wind turbines. To mitigate the vibration issues, typically rotor blades are selectively weighted or trim tabs located at a trailing edge of the rotor blades are adjusted to balance the rotor. Trim tabs are bendable or movable portions of the rotor blade trailing edge and are typically bent upwards or downwards by ground maintenance personnel utilizing gages and tools to adjust position of the trim tab to reduce or eliminate the vibration. Such methods of adjustment are time consuming and cumbersome, and as stated, are only performed on the ground by maintenance personnel.